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Abstract

Poor, black women in their young adulthood are the greatest victims of the HIV/AIDS epidemic that ravages South Africa. This thesis is about the victimhood of HIV positive women and a process from which a group of HIV positive women started renegotiating the victimhood that constrained their agency and power. HIV positive women are perceived as inferior members of society due to unequal gender configurations, structures of power and traditional and religious beliefs, all of which favour a male bias. These aspects add on to the victimhood of HIV positive women and constitute them to the private sphere where they suffer inaudibly and invisibly, separated from the cultural consciousness, and devoid of empathy and opportunities to influence the public discourse. In April 2008 a HIV University pilot project was implemented among a group of HIV positive women living in Mpophomeni township, South Africa. This model created a space for the women participants to equip themselves with knowledge and experience that they could make use of to challenge social structures that discriminate against their HIV positiveness. The women thus adjusted the space of the HIV University intervention into a platform from which they could embark on challenging gender configurations, social structures, religious and cultural norms, all which appoints HIV positive women to the role as suffering victims. The women recognized that in order for them to resist the submission they would need to become an organized group of visible, social agents with a public voice. The group thus started to pursue their aspiration to break out of the private and closed space created by the HIV University project and move from invisibility to visibility, silence to voice, and submission to resistance. The HIV University project was thus a means for the women participants to equip themselves with tools they could utilize to resist their subjugation as HIV positive women and to reveal themselves from their culturally constituted victimhood.